


i came with empty hands

by propinquitous



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bottom Shiro (Voltron), Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Praise, Rimming, Showers, references to body issues and chronic pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 11:38:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16062326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propinquitous/pseuds/propinquitous
Summary: The thing about being the protector, he knows, is that no one has the instinct to take care of you. Shiro knows it's equal parts nature and nurture, the culmination of his big body and the implicit walls he's built. He’s not sure if he’s ever known how to accept care.But Keith is strong, now, and Shiro has started to crave it.





	i came with empty hands

Shiro is big. He's known that for a long time. Sometime just before his first orbital test run, he'd shot up so fast that they had to refit his flight suit, reconfigure his harnesses in the cockpit. It had been embarrassing but gratifying; he loved the way people looked at him, looked _up_ at him all of a sudden. He'd always been a talker, a flirt, but now he was desirable in a way he'd never felt before. It took more strength than he likes to admit to keep from preening under all the eyes suddenly on him. 

After that, he grew in different ways. He’d grown up fighting, learned to throw proper punches and roundhouse an opponent long before he’d even arrived at the Garrison. He knew how to harness his strength. His new frame gave him more to work with, though, and he found that he liked putting on bulk, liked having more than a lithe fighter’s build. He loved the feeling of racking a new weight, of being able to lift more after months of work. He reveled in the routine of it, took comfort in the reliable growth of his muscles.

Being strong made him feel useful. He helped his friends move into officer's quarters as they graduated, manhandled their new bookshelves and dressers into place; he could build things, take his bike apart and put it back together without anyone's help. His hulking presence kept new cadets in line if they even thought about picking on the small kids. He knew his body made people respect him more than they might otherwise, cadets and officers alike. It gave him a confidence he carried into space, across galaxies.

The first time he fucked Adam against a wall, held him up by his thighs and took his entire weight as he shuddered and came, he understood another kind of power his body gave him.

When his diagnosis came, he clung to his strength. He went from working out a few times a week to often multiple times a day, whenever he could fit it in. His strength and the confidence he had in his ability to build his body were the only things that kept him grounded when the Garrison tried to med board him out. No matter how unrealistic it was, he had the sense that he could bully his wasting muscles into maintenance, that somehow he could keep himself safe from his own body as it destroyed itself from the inside.

That feeling saved him again when he was new in his body. If Kuron’s body wasn’t his, at least he could train it into shapes and abilities he knew. He could eventually make it his own again.

When it’s all said and done, he likes his body. He fits into it and carries it with confidence. Even with all its new scars and the prosthetic, he knows he makes the people around him feel safe. He protects his family, throws his weight and strength around to keep them alive, even if they don't need it as much anymore. Keith needs protecting least of all.

Keith had come back to him changed. A little taller, a lot broader. He's still smaller than Shiro, but his late growth spurt and two years with nothing to do but train had served him well. He’s stronger than he looks, too. Shiro thinks he might have tried to hide it before, tamped it down before he understood what he came from. But now he owns it. He pins Shiro when they spar, deflects Krolia's training blows with an ease that none of the other paladins can match. He's seen him take Kinkade and Griffin down in the same fight - it's part stubbornness, but his newfound strength means that Shiro almost never gets tapped in during those bouts anymore.

When Shiro watched him strike Sendak down, it occurred to him that Keith might be even stronger than he is.

The thing about being the protector, he knows, is that no one has the instinct to take care of you. It's also the natural result of growing up alone, of never really learning how to seek help. Shiro knows it's equal parts nature and nurture, the culmination of his big body and the implicit walls he's built. He’s not sure if he’s ever known how to accept care.

But Keith is strong, now, and Shiro has started to crave it.

“Tell me about your day,” Keith says, sprawled out with his head on Shiro's stomach.

Shiro does. He tells him about the meetings, the creeping anxiety that despite all the progress made since Sam Holt came back, they don't take the threat seriously. That even though the Galra are defeated, he can't shake the sense that some greater threat will always loom. He always used to be so sure that he could change things, that he could move the Garrison in the directions he wanted, believed in, a confidence that had only grown during his time with Voltron. Being back at the base, with its protocols and processes and triplicate signatures, has made him despair in a way he never expected.

“I asked Veronica to update a form for me today, just a check box that needed to be added, and you know what she said?”

Keith shakes his head and leans up to loop a finger around Shiro's. From here Shiro can see the long line of his neck as he tilts his chin up to meet his gaze. 

“‘You'll need to file a request’. I wanted to die, babe. I absolutely wanted to die. For fuck’s sake, I fought aliens. I was forced to live as a gladiator for a year and I had my damn my consciousness transferred into a clone. You can't seriously tell me I need to get approval for a check box,” he sighs.

The absurdity of his life gets to him in moments like this. When it was his day to day, when he never knew what would happen next, it was easy to take it in stride. Now that he’s settled into a real life, a mostly normal life, he struggles to process most of what has happened to him. It's easier not to, he admits to himself in quiet moments, catching himself out. He's fine. He turns his anger and frustration outward instead, focuses on the things he can fix.

“I swear to God if I have to hear the phrase ‘There's a process for that’ or ‘You'll need the appropriate signatures’ again I'll die. That'll be it for me. You'll have to come save me again.”

Keith is staring at him. He's waiting for him to finish, Shiro knows, and that his attempt at a joke might not have landed incredibly well. He's not sure what Keith thinks, can't tell from his level gaze. He doesn’t know what to do but fill the silence.

“I thought it would be different. I thought we would come back and everyone would understand what's really out there.” It almost physically hurts to say it. “I thought they would listen to me,” he admits, “and I wish I wouldn't get so angry when they don't.”

Keith huffs and it blows his bangs up onto Shiro’s shirt. Shiro braces himself for a reprimand, as if Keith has ever been cruel to him.

“I wish they would listen to you more,” Keith finally says, carefully. “You’re good at your job, you know what you’re doing. But,” he says, inhales. “Just because they don’t always listen to you doesn’t mean they don’t take you seriously, Shiro. You’re the captain of the _Atlas_. You’ve seen and survived things that none of them can even imagine; they know that.” 

Shiro looks down, a little ashamed of something he can't name.

“And, for the record, you would have been amazing even if you hadn’t been through it all.” Shiro feels Keith’s back expand against his trunk as he takes a deep breath. “It matters that you’re here.”

He sighs. Shiro is struck by how serious Keith can be; he wants to believe him. He’s seemed lighter since they got back to Earth, less weighed down by a life he was never ready for. It’s let him be young for the first time. Shiro is grateful for the space it's given him to grow, both for his own sake and selfishly, for what it means for Shiro. He's learned to tell when Shiro needs him. When he needs Keith to be stronger than he is.

“I wish I had an answer, sweetheart,” Keith says. The endearment makes something around Shiro’s heart go slack. The tension seeps out of his shoulders and he grips Keith’s hand more tightly. 

He knows what he needs to say.

“Will you take care of me?” he murmurs. Keith looks up at him, brow a little furrowed and his mouth curved up in half a smile. It’s an awkward angle, but he brings a hand to Shiro’s cheek and Shiro chases after it, lets his eyes close.

“Will you let me?” Keith asks. Shiro nods against his palm.

“Promise,” he says.

“Okay,” Keith says. He rolls over and up to straddle Shiro’s hips and Shiro can’t help but bring his hands to Keith's waist, grip a little too tightly through the rough polyester of his new officer greys. He reaches for Shiro’s collar, undoes it and the hidden front buttons. After that he pauses to undo the clips that attach it to the base of his prosthetic. Shiro watches as his tongue pokes out a little in concentration - the technology of his arm is beyond comprehension, but the mechanism for keeping his shirt from sitting loose around it is almost too simple. He moves Shiro’s arm up and out to push the shirt the rest of the way off.

He pauses, then, runs his hands appreciatively over Shiro’s chest, his shoulders, still covered by his undershirt. “Shower first?” he cocks his head as he asks. 

Shiro nods again and follows Keith through the threshold to the bathroom. He dutifully strips the rest of the clothes and powers down his prosthetic as Keith starts the water, watches unabashedly as Keith leaves his clothes in a puddle on the floor. He turns to face Shiro, naked, arms crossed.

“What?” he asks, playful. His tone is a little devilish, but his smile is only sweet. It makes Shiro feel weak, a feeling he's still trying to get used to.

“You look good,” he says. And Keith does. His body is long and lean from his calves to his waist, where it suddenly widens into his muscled torso. Shiro has to shake off the memory of how skinny he was even just a year or two ago as a flush creeps over his chest. He can't reconcile the memory of the angry, lanky boy he met on a recruitment tour with the soft, scarred man naked in front of him. It still blindsides Shiro sometimes that he gets to have this.

Keith laughs a little and turns back to switch the tap to start the shower. 

“Come here,” he says. Shiro follows, helpless, underneath the warm spray. Keith is only an inch or two shorter than him now and it doesn't take much for him to envelop Shiro. He wraps his long arms around Shiro's shoulders and pulls his face into the crook of his neck, pulls their bodies flush against one another. The feeling of Keith pressed warm and slick to his chest still feels like something new, like he's 18 and finally allowed to spend the night with his boyfriend, like he only recently found the freedom to touch and kiss and want. He takes a deep breath when Keith pulls away. He reaches for the shampoo and starts to squeeze some into his palm, reach for Keith's hair, but he's stopped by the firm grip on his wrist.

“Let me, remember?”

Shiro nods as Keith takes the shampoo from him and kneads it into his hair. He pushes gently on Shiro's shoulder to turn him away from the spray and scratches suds into the base of Shiro's skull, runs his fingers in his temples and down into his sideburns. It makes Shiro shiver with pleasure and he sighs.

“Feel good?”

“Yeah,” Shiro breathes. 

Keith hums, washing his own hair while Shiro stands under the shower and passively rinses. He waits while Keith works conditioner through the long ends, watches him with something like fondness. He's never conditioned his hair in his life.

“What?” Keith says.

“You're cute, is all,” Shiro says. He takes a loofah off its hook and hands it to Keith.

Keith takes it, soaps it up, and drags it across Shiro's chest. It's in these quiet moments that Shiro can soak up what it means to have a partner, someone who cleans his body and holds him close. After Adam, he had settled into the knowledge that no one would ever love him like that again. Even before Kerberos, he had accepted that his work would be his life, that he would throw himself into missions until the Garrison or his illness physically stopped him. 

After, with the Galra, there was no thinking about a life beyond the next day, no room to imagine survival beyond the next fight. And then finally, with Voltron, it at least felt like whatever space he had in his heart was taken up by the team. Intimacy was intimacy, he figured, in whatever form it took, even if it left him alone in bed at night. It became easier to accept that no one would ever hold him through the panic attacks that came after Kerberos than to imagine that anyone would want to deal with the person he'd become. He thought he'd lost his ability to give himself, that no one would want to care for someone as empty as he felt.

Keith had proved him wrong on all counts.

“I’m proud of you, you know,” Keith says, his arms over Shiro's shoulders. “I know it's hard to adjust back to daily stuff, but you're too hard on yourself.” He runs a slick hand down to cup his balls, fingers wandering to pet at the wet insides of his thighs. He smiles and says, “You're amazing.”

Shiro shakes his head. It makes him unsteady, the little ways that Keith builds him up, makes even the smallest accomplishments seem Earth-shattering. He wishes he could internalize it more, wishes he could see himself the way Keith does.

Keith moves to lift Shiro's arm and scrub down his ribs, then carefully moves to the space underneath the prosthetic anchor. It still hurts sometimes; there's the phantom pain of the amputation and the way that the anchor pulls at his skin. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but sometimes he’ll snap at a cadet or Iverson and Keith will spend extra time that night gently massaging at the juncture, leaving light kisses along the seam. The worst days leave him aching no matter what Keith does.

Keith takes a little soap in his hand and gingerly rubs around the anchor, washes the dip of his armpit. It doesn't hurt.

Shiro leans into the touch. He doesn't know what to say. It's hard to feel good at all of these little things when every day used to mean life and death; hard to feel like he fits at the Garrison anymore. He fell back into the hierarchy easily enough, but he still has nightmares, still gets a little too angry a little too fast when the bureaucracy stalls his plans. Sometimes he can't make it through briefings without getting up to pace or take a lap around the annex. He's scared he's not as kind as he used to be, that eventually people will notice and lose respect for him. That he really won't fit anymore.

“Hey, sweetheart?” Keith says, “You with me?” Keith's eyes are searching when Shiro opens his.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” he insists.

“Turn around for me,” Keith says, and it's the first thing he's asked for that isn't really a question.

Shiro turns so that he faces the showerhead and the water slides down his back. Keith is behind him, washing down the planes of his back and the backs of this thighs. Shiro lets his eyes fall closed again and leans forward to brace himself against the wall while Keith works. On his way back up from Shiro's ankles, his hands stall at his lower back. He lets suds pool there until they drip down. Then his hand is slipping between Shiro's legs to tease at him again, gently rolling his balls and sliding a thumb behind them. Shiro gasps and presses back again Keith's hand. He moves, trails his first fingers over Shiro's hole without pressure, teases at the rim.

“Okay?” Keith says as he moves two fingers over him, a little more intent now. Shiro sighs and nods, leaning against his forearm. He spreads his legs to accommodate Keith, encourage him as he rubs his fingers over Shiro, always just shy of dipping in.

It's a monumental effort for Shiro not to shove his hips back. He lets himself beg, though.

“Fuck, Keith, please,” he groans. Keith holds a firm hand on his hip to keep him still.

“We'll get there, I promise,” Keith says against his back. For now he keeps up his gentle work, moving and pushing just slightly against him. After another minute he leans over Shiro and kisses his shoulder blade, mouths against it as he grinds a little against Shiro, makes him moan. Shiro thinks he's showing off and it makes his heart stutter, remembering all the brash, hard-edged things he loves about him.

Shiro turns to face him, pulls him in close for a kiss. Keith leans into him, hands on his chest. His mouth is warm against Shiro's, his tongue gentle and exploratory. 

Keith pulls back and says, “Dry off and go lie down.” 

After Shiro's toweled himself off, he lies naked, curled up on top of the blankets. He listens to Keith finish bathing, turn off the water. He listens to the soft sounds as he dries off and thinks about what might happen next, unsure what Keith has in mind. He touches himself a little and bites back a noise imagining just what it might mean to be taken care of right now. 

“I thought that was my job,” Keith says from somewhere above him. Shiro opens his eyes and smiles, sees Keith's warm eyes above him, his damp hair dripping at the longest parts.

“It is,” Shiro says before rolling onto his back. He can take up the whole bed like this and he does, stretching out to feel the clean fabric underneath his freshly scrubbed skin. Keith was a show off before but now it's Shiro's turn as he puts his body on display, stretching his arms above his head and subtling flexing the muscles around his ribs. Part of knowing his body is knowing what Keith likes about it, and he knows that Keith likes to be reminded of just how big Shiro is.

Keith strokes himself as Shiro watches, and Shiro feels his own erection brush against his stomach.

“Turn over,” Keith's voice is pitched down as he says it. It makes Shiro's face burn. He does as he's told.

He feels Keith's weight on the bed as he straddles one leg. The warmth of Keith's hands on his back catches him off guard but he melts into it as Keith starts kneading the juncture of his neck, into his shoulders. His hands work their way down Shiro's spine until they reach his ass, gently squeezing. Shiro tries to keep himself still, not bucking back or rutting forward. His body is tense with it.

With his face half buried in anticipation, he can't see Keith. It makes his stomach flutter and it's almost too much when he feels Keith shifting again to get entirely between his legs, pushing his thighs apart just enough to fit. Then his hands are back on Shiro's ass and the warm, wet weight of his tongue is there.

It's immediately overwhelming. Shiro cries out and moves back against Keith, feels dirty at the press of him against his ass. He can't stop his knees from pulling up under him to get a better angle against the flat of Keith's tongue as he licks broad strokes against his hole. It makes Shiro feel small and needy when Keith does this to him.

“Feels so good,” Shiro slurs. He can feel a cooling wet spot of drool against the pillow.

Behind him, Keith moans, spreads him open with both hands. It makes Shiro shudder to be seen like this, to know that Keith has him at his most vulnerable. It feels good to give into him. Shiro moans when he feels a long line of spit drip down and then Keith presses in. It's just the tip of his tongue but it's enough to shatter Shiro and take him totally offline as he traces the tip around his rim, fucks him filthy on his tongue.

“Fuck, baby, please,” Shiro is rapidly disintegrating as Keith moves his tongue, tracing it around the outside before pushing sloppily back in. It makes Shiro whine and curse, almost sob into the pillow. When he's fully pressed his mouth to his ass, Shiro dimly thinks that this is what being eaten out is, this dissolution of boundaries and the way that Keith can taste every part of him. It's consuming.

Shiro isn't used to getting what he wants. Not like this. With everything else, with the Garrison and his health and later, Voltron and Atlas, he's always had to earn it; it's always felt like a battle. He had to prove that he was more than the dystrophy, that he could carry on in the absence of a family and the presence of newer traumas. Every single thing he's gotten has been the result of exhausting work, of tireless effort. Of proving other people wrong.

Keith never makes him feel like he has to earn anything. He's just here, taking Shiro apart because he asked him to.

There's a wet smack and then Shiro is cold as Keith pulls away. Behind him, Keith asks, “You doing okay?”

Shiro turns his head and cracks an eye open to look at him. He's a mess, his mouth a little swollen and red, slick with spit down his chin; his hair is drying in a nest of cowlicks. Still, Keith smiles at Shiro as he lets out a weak _Yeah_ and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. 

“You taste so good.” Shiro blushes a deep red when Keith says it. He lifts his ass a little, plaintive, almost begging. Keith bends down to give him one last lick that makes Shiro yelp before he's leaning toward the nightstand.

Shiro's heart rate picks up when he sees the bottle of lube in Keith's hand. He bunches the pillow under his face, folds an arm under it to support his head. He hopes Keith will take his time.

Shiro is already a wet mess at the first cold touch of Keith's hand. He teases him with his finger like he did with his tongue, keeping his touch light and circling. 

“You look so beautiful like this,” Keith says. He hums as he moves, dips the tip of one finger in and Shiro is gasping for his words, his hand. He's so hard it hurts but he keeps his hips up, away from anything that would touch him.

“I remember the first time I saw you,” he continues, pushing in just a little more. Everything is obscenely wet and it makes even the smallest motions loud, makes Shiro shiver with how exposed he feels. “You were so handsome in that uniform. I had such a crush back then, did you know that?” Shiro gasps as he gets one finger in. He can feel Keith's knuckles against him, the slow burn of a second finger sliding beside the first. “I can't believe I get to see you like this. So open for me.”

Shiro lets out a choked moan as Keith keeps up with the praise, tells him how he looks around his fingers, how soft and tight he feels. He feels like some part of him has cracked, like Keith has found a secret place in him that needs exactly this combination of filth and want to open up. It feels like he's blooming under his hands.

Still, his cock hangs heavy between his legs, untouched since Keith started. He doesn't want to touch himself; some needy part of him will make him wait until Keith decides he's ready. For now Keith's fingers are enough and he almost screams when they crook inside him.

“Fuck, _fuck_ ,” he groans, pushes back. He's out of words that aren't curses and he lets out a desperate string of them.

“Feel good?” Keith asks between biting kisses across his ass, the backs of his thighs. Shiro hears his teasing lilt and doesn't need to open his eyes to know that Keith is grinning.

“God, Keith, please,” he says and doesn't know what he's begging for. He's not sure if he wants to come like this, almost wants to find out it he can come untouched, but then he thinks about the way Keith would hold him open if he gets on his back, how he'll be able to see his face as he comes. He's overcome then with the need to be bent in half, to get well and truly fucked. He imagines the feeling of Keith coming inside him, the way it would drip down his legs afterwards, how Keith wouldn't be able to resist pushing his fingers back in to feel the mess he'd made. It makes him buck hard against Keith's hand.

It's never occurred to Shiro that he's loud, but his throat feels raw as Keith's fingers spark something up his spine.

“Keith, baby, I need more,” he moans pathetically. Keith rubs hard inside him in response, building a pressure low in Shiro's belly that makes him squirm.

“What do you need from me?” he asks. He soothes his free hand over Shiro's thighs while he waits.

“Will you fuck me? I wanna see your - _ah_ \- your face,” he gasps.

Keith forces a third finger in at that and the feeling zips through to Shiro's toes, his fingertips. Keith's fingers are long and deft and Shiro feels prised open as he pushes them in as far as he can, fucks in and out a few times for good measure until Shiro feels them spreading to stretch him open. He cries out as Keith moves - he's oversensitive like he's come except he hasn't, and if he doesn't get on his back and get Keith in him right now he might actually die from the press of Keith's fingers and the heady feeling in his gut.

“Okay, okay,” Keith whispers, comforting, and Shiro realizes that he's been whimpering. Keith pulls out and away to give Shiro room to adjust, carefully scooting a pillow under his hips as he arranges himself.

He watches as Keith gets more lube on his hand and slicks it over himself, squeezes more and lets it warm in hand before he gets Shiro even more wet, pushing slick fingers in deep. It’s excessive but he loves it - how sloppy he feels, how careful Keith is.

“Ready?” Keith asks as he pushes Shiro's left knee back to spread him open.

“Yeah,” Shiro says on a big exhale. He keeps his eyes on Keith as he lines himself up, holds him steady at his side. As he nudges in, he looks up. Shiro holds his gaze until he bottoms out.

He hisses as Keith waits for him to adjust, grinds a little on him to get used to the feeling of being full. It's always so much at first, the stretch and burn of it. He squeezes around Keith experimentally as it fades into a dull, pleasurable ache and smiles when it almost makes him collapse.

“Fuck, you can't just - you can't do that, you know,” Keith chides, laughing. He leans closer then, gets his hands under him and starts moving, and Keith goes silent in concentration. It makes Shiro gasp, something sharp punched out of him. Keith holds himself up on one arm long enough to run a thumb along his lower lip and Shiro aches for it, sucks at the pad and moans until Keith's arm gives out.

Keith braces himself on Shiro's chest as he fucks into him. It's exactly this push and pull that Shiro loves, the feeling of being raw and open, still strong enough to take Keith's weight as he works. Sweat drips off of Keith's brow and down his sides, now, slick under his hands and against Shiro. The space between his legs is wrecked with lube and sweat and spit and Shiro loves the messy slide of it, the way their bodies move against each other. He pulls Keith flush against his chest, hiking his legs up to wrap around him. Keith gets a hand in the crook of one knee and pushes, and it changes the angle so much and so fast that Shiro shouts something high pitched and broken.

“Am I taking good care of you?” Keith asks, hot against Shiro's ear.

“So,” he starts and chokes on a thrust, gasping, “You're so good to me.”

“Tell me.”

Shiro groans, gets a hand around Keith's neck to bring him in for a bruising kiss. He can't pull Keith close enough.

“You make me feel so good, baby, you make me feel so safe,” he tries, his words wet against Keith's cheek. His hand is tangled in Keith's hair and he uses it to guide Keith to his neck, silently asking.

“Fuck, just like that, please,” Keith's teeth have gone a little sharp and it kicks something up in Shiro, the prickle of it with the hard sensation of Keith's sucking kisses. “You make me feel so wanted, I wanna be here with you so bad, I can't -”

Something in Shiro is taut, snapping. He lets himself get lost in it, the hard drag of Keith inside him, the strain of his body being held open, the almost painful mouth at his neck. He feels rubbed raw.

Keith pulls back to sit on his knees, keeping Shiro's legs pushed up. It makes Shiro feel even more exposed as Keith finally reaches for his neglected cock and starts stroking him in earnest.

“Are you gonna come for me?” Keith's voice is gentle. Shiro doesn't know how he manages it in this state, when everything is molten and he's moaning at every thrust. He can only nod, bucking wildly between Keith's cock and his hand. It's all too much.

“Come on honey, show me how good I am to you,” he says, still somehow controlled and even-toned.

Shiro's eyes are stinging now. He tries to speak, tries to tell Keith all the things he wants to, to tell him what Keith does to him, how he wants to stay fucked on his cock for hours, wants to spend the rest of his life worshiping Keith's mouth. The hand around him is too much now, though, slippery and tight with sweat.

Keith comes back to kiss him, his mouth a dirty slide against Shiro's. He almost stops moving, stays pressed deep and insistent inside, grinding against Shiro. The twin sensations with the slickness of their skin make Shiro yell into it as he comes. 

“Shiro, fuck, I'm -” Keith's voice is breaking and Shiro has just enough awareness to tighten the hold of his legs around Keith's waist, encouraging.

“C'mon baby,” Shiro slurs. He's still in pieces but he can pull himself together enough to get Keith to the edge. He can barely keep his hand on Keith, his muscles gone weak. Still, he tries, holds onto Keith's side and digs his fingers into his ribs. He feels his hips stutter against him until he stops moving entirely and lets out a long moan, his forehead falling against Shiro's shoulder.

As Shiro comes down, he starts laughing. He can’t stop the feeling of it bubbling up in his chest, the sheer relief of it. Keith pushes up and looks down at him, questioning a little before he breaks into a smile, pushing the hair back from Shiro’s forehead. They laugh together for a minute. Keith keeps his hand on Shiro’s face, touches his nose to Shiro’s.

Keith pulls him into the shower and they repeat a simplified version of before, just to rinse the sweat and come off. Shiro feels lighter now, moans and laughs and moans again when Keith pushes a finger into him and mouths at his shoulder. He knows Keith will keep cleaning him up when they get to bed, but it feels good to let Keith melt into him a little more, to lean into it for another moment. They kiss for a while under the spray of the shower and it feels easy, simple.

After, they lay in bed, Shiro on his stomach with Keith sitting beside him.

“We don’t have to stay here, you know,” Keith says, running a damp washcloth between Shiro's legs. The afterglow is still warm around them. Shiro sighs.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“We could leave,” Keith says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “It’s not on us to keep saving the world. We already did it once.” He shrugs. Shiro is silent for a moment before he sits up, the washcloth lost somewhere to the side of the bed.

“You know I can’t do that,” he whispers. He traces a finger across Keith’s clavicle, an apology.

“Well, you can. But _you_ can’t. I know that. Come here.” He pulls Shiro toward him and lies back so that they’re side by side. 

“It's okay if you're not what or where you want to be right now. I'm not sure I am either a lot of the time,” Keith’s voice is barely a whisper. He runs a thumb along the high ridge of Shiro’s cheekbone, holds softly onto his jaw.

“When did you get so calm?” Shiro asks. Keith never stops surprising him and it makes Shiro feel silly sometimes, like maybe he can’t keep up with Keith’s capacity for change. It scares him to think about, the idea that Keith might outgrow him.

“Honestly?” Keith laughs, “Probably on the whale. I had a lot of time to think and no one to get mad at.” He must see something in Shiro’s face then because he pulls him in so that they’re nose to nose. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You have to promise me.”

Shiro chews on his lip. It occurs to him suddenly that he shouldn’t be afraid of what Keith can be; it should make him want to be better. He remembers how it felt when Adam begged him not to go on the last mission, how it felt like he wasn’t willing to let Shiro be as big and broad as he wanted, as he was. It might not have been the case, and he might never really understand what Adam needed from him, but either way he has a person now who will never try to rein him in. If Keith can go from an angry kid who stole his car to a gentle, caring man who knows how to take care of him when he asks, become the leader of Voltron and a real, in-the-flesh hero, then maybe Shiro can be a little kinder to himself. Maybe he can learn to take it slow, accept his bad days as just that - days, not determinants.

He nods into Keith’s hand, brings his up to meet it.

“Okay,” he closes his eyes briefly, opens them to Keith’s soft, intent stare.

“I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> there are so many layers of self indulgence here i legit can't count them lmao
> 
> [tumblr](http://propinquitous.tumblr.com)


End file.
